Indie Flashback: Samoa Joe Battles Apocalypse

by Daniel Johnson

Another Thursday has passed without a proper addition to the ROH Throwback Thursday series by the folks at ROH. I have thus dug through the ROH YouTube channel and have come up with this.

Well, you don’t have to be Dave Meltzer to predict the result of this one. However, this match works as an example to me of one reason why indie fans found Joe so appealing. Given Joe’s reputation, when he faced an opponent like Apocalypse with a much less recognizable name even then, he could have easily just squashed him and been done with it. While Joe could rank among the best squash machines and in fact has had squash matches, many times he would still treat fans to a good, competitive bout. Heck, Apocalypse even dominates large portions of this encounter and at one point picks Joe up as if Joe was a much smaller man and nearly breaks him apart with a backbreaker.

Still, when you have a name that cannot distinguish you from one of the X-Men’s adversaries you can only go so far. Throughout the match Joe punishes Apocalypse with strikes and also gets in a little chopfest. For the finish it is muscle buster time and Apocalypse is done. The clip ends with Apocalypse walking out after getting a handshake from Samoa Joe.